


Check & Mate

by appositeNautilus



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F, Flighty Broads, Snarky Bulls--t
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-09
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-03 08:43:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appositeNautilus/pseuds/appositeNautilus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do dead Heroes of Light dream of?<br/>If you are two highly competitive young women with something to prove, chess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dying in SBURB was a tricky business. Depending on the definition, and which timelines you cared to include, Rose had died at least twice by now. Enough times for her to have a presence in the dream bubbles, certainly.   
This Rose knew that the game marched on without her-- that her demise, while a strategic setback, was not an insurmountable obstacle to her friends.  
Friends. It seemed strange to her to use the word. Though the cloying, ineffable whisperings of the horrorterrors had retreated from her psyche at the point of her expiry, their influence lingered now, no doubt given power by their proximity, inasmuch as distance meant anything in the Furthest Ring. Regardless of how you sliced it, she was still under their power, their indelible inky fingerprints plastered across the surface of her hubristic mind. That influence was evidence enough that friends were not for one such as she. It told her that personal attachments weakened one's resolve and made one vulnerable to exploitation or manipulation. That Rose was even in this condition was ample demonstration of the philosophy. Quod erat demonstrandum.

One of the reasons Rose found the concept of SBURB so fascinating, when Jade had obliquely discoursed on its subject matter (under not insignificant duress, granted), was the questions it raised about the nature of self: she was, definitely, deceased, and thus ostensibly no longer a part of SBURB. Yet she retained all recollections of the game and her time prior to it, including the half-memories of her alternate timeline dreamself that had merged with her own dreamself and awoken her on Derse. This in spite of the fact that her reconstituted dreamself was now demonstrably a separate entity, charged with representing the gestalt of Team Rose within the game instead of the greater part of her, the most vital and experienced part, that had actually stood on Earth's grass, felt its rain on her face. All those sensations had happened to this Rose, this soul (if not this body, since that charcoal-hued husk had been left on the Battlefield), now drifting in the bubbles of the Furthest Ring.

She certainly felt like a Rose Prime. The sweetest and fullest of any such as bore her name. After all, she was the Rose that had been awake for the lion's share of those thirteen years, not sleeping in her murky tower like some dark fairytale maiden. It galled somewhat that Dream Rose now commanded the title of _The_ Rose, and on the slim chance any wandering souls, dreaming or dead, found her here she would be afforded the same ignominy as poor Davesprite-- eternally the other, the inferior, the spare. It was hard not to harbour resentment-- though in fairness it had not been Dream Rose who had decided so foolishly to face Jack head on. Then again, since Dream Rose possessed the same memories and presumably followed similar trains of thought, surely she had? Or would have done?

Rose was confident this circular logic would only serve to drive her further out of her mind should she try to unravel it, so instead she did her best to derive what enjoyment she could from her situation. There was a certain amount of solace to be found in revisiting old memories, fondly remembered moments: Jasper, chatting with Dave, John, or Jade, or a particularly satisfying victory over her mother.  
She was dimly aware that this wasn't all there was; that it was possible for bubbles to intermingle, and for her memories to meld into another's, so that real, non-imagined discourse might be had. This didn't appeal though, for reasons Rose didn't wish to examine too closely, and if she was not content to drift along with the imprint of her dead cat and mother for company, then she certainly was not upset enough by the prospect to seek out an alternative.

Which is why, while she was preparing Jaspers for one of the baths he so despised, but which she enjoyed if for no other reason than to see him wriggle around and bat at the soap foam adorning his fuzzy little head, she was surprised to find that her bathroom had begun to phase into the side of a staggeringly sharp canyon-- and that perched upon a net of webbing as thick and strong as steel girders, was an impossibly huge white spider.  
Even more of a surprise was the grey-skinned girl with the candy-corn horns protruding from her head, standing by the enormous creature.  
"Soooooooo," the girl said, petting the spider. " _You're_ supposed to be the human's Seer, right?"


	2. Chapter 2

She'd spoken to trolls before, of course. The l33t-speaking Seer and her peculiar approach to making 'hatefriends', the guileless bull-themed rapper attempting to court Dave, the blustersome snob and his woefully ill-judged advances, that one prophetic troll who seemed hellbent on roleplaying some sort of haywire frog robot, and Kanaya, of course, with all her deliciously earnest passive-aggressive meddling. She'd heard of this one of course, one of her opposite numbers. The trolls' Hero of Light. And yet, she'd never actually laid eyes on one of the aliens before. In her mind's eye, it had been hard to picture them as anything other than obnoxious humans. Now that she had, she was infinitely curious about them. Their physiognomy, their culture, their capabilities; although she was at pains not to show it. After all, they had the upper hand in having been able to watch her throughout her formative years, if Kanaya's intimations were anything to go on. It wouldn't do to gush. Especially not around this one, if half of what she had heard was true.

In her moments of wandering the bubble with her guest, it was possible to build up a kind of collage of the personality that was suddenly vying for control of her surroundings, as well as the shape of the body holding it. She was slender, wiry, with tendons and aggregations of bone (chitin?) in places that would've looked uncanny, perverse, on a human, but simply made her look more predatory and vicious. In her ragged shirt and jeans (they surely couldn't actually be denim) and her untidy, brittle shock of black hair it was almost possible to see her as human, though-- at least until those peculiar horns caught her eye; to say nothing of the pallid grey skin and the prominent fangs that protruded even when her guest frowned, which was often.  
From the plain white eyes beneath her glasses, it was clear that she was dead, but quite how she had managed to enter another's dream bubble of her own volition was a puzzle, until Rose had asked.

"God tier privileges," she had smirked, momentarily phasing into a garish tangerine orange tunic and saffron hood, periwinkle blue butterfly wings erupting from her back, which she flapped ostentatiously. "We can't aaaaaaaall have them, of course."  
Rose had primly elected not to rise to the bait.  
"So, have you been visiting all the humans, or am I to feel privileged by your decision to haunt my lowly cranny of paradox space?"  
There was a flicker of something positively human on Vriska's face-- from what Rose had been able to derive of troll expressions, which fortuitously seemed in general to overlap with humans', it seemed almost to be regret.  
"I'm only vis8ing the ones that aren't feeble-minded narcoleptics or smug, hilariously insecure wigglers, so yes, you should."  
"With what intention, may I ask?" Rose probed, keeping her voice level as they walked along the pure white Land of Light and Rain beach, an ominous maroon sky with a green moon hanging over them.  
"I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. For some reason John seems to overlook your particular brand of snarky bullsh8."  
"I'm flattered," Rose said, graciously. "Although I do wonder what on earth I can offer as a host. I haven't baked a cake or anything."  
"You like gaaaaaaaames, Lalonde?" Vriska said.  
"Occasionally."  
"How about FLARP? You have _that_ on your lame blue plan8?"  
Rose thought of the exposure to live action role-play she'd had; chiefly Youtube videos, supplied by Dave for the most part. Grubby, silly, low-brow stuff.  
"I'm afraid I shall have to risk being a poor host and veto that suggestion outright," she said.  
Vriska scowled again, kicking a multi-coloured whorled shell along the sand.  
"Fine, you suggest something then."  
Rose scoured her mind for something she could play well, something that Vriska was likely to be passingly familiar with. In the distance, beyond the beach, she saw the black and white of the Battlefield stretching into the maroon beyond.  
"Tell me, Miss Serket," she said, a chair phasing into existence beneath her as she seated herself, a table appearing between her and the quizzical troll. "Do you play chess?"

"You don't wanna play this game with me, Lalonde," Vriska said, latticing her fingers and cracking them together. "I have _all_ the luck, remember?"  
Rose allowed herself a faint smirk as she deftly arranged the pieces on the board.  
"Unless the troll and human versions of the game vary dramatically, luck is of trivial relevance in chess."  
"You're only saying that because you've never played against someone as lucky as me!"  
"You can't be that lucky if you're dead," Rose observed. Vriska seethed, but did not have a response. She sat down instead, the room around them flickering temporarily in dream-phase until it resembled a cavernous, sparsely-decorated manse. The chair she was sat in was more of a throne, a high-backed stone monstrosity with several coarse leather pillows, and furs of unusual hue tossed over it to make it bearable. She curled up, tossing a large off-green pelt around her shoulders as she studied the board.  
"These pieces look stupid," she announced. "What is that supposed to be?"

Rose followed the finger pointing imperiously out from her hide pile, to the little white horse.  
"That's a knight," she said. "Mounted pieces that can jump over others and move in an eccentric 'L'-shaped pattern."  
Vriska's lip curled.  
"A cavalreaper?" she said. "Why's it look like a _musclebeast_?"  
"And what, precisely, do your cavalreapers ride?" Rose asked.  
"Not musclebeasts! Jeeeeeeeegus. You humans are crazier than I thought."  
Rose rolled her eyes as their surroundings shifted again, this time into an open-plan living area, all chic couches, vintage rugs and obnoxious wizard figurines. She deposited herself on a white couch and crossed her legs in a manner that, had she been holding one of the casefiles she infrequently updated concerning her friends and mother, would have signified she Meant Business.  
"Rather than embark on a highly contemptuous stand-off over the relative values of the military cultures popular with our species, shall we simply begin the game?"  
"I'm w8ing for you, jackass!"  
"Actually, in human chess, white traditionally moves first. You have the initiative, Vriska."  
Vriska hunched over the board, muttering something Rose had no doubt imagining to be derogatory about human cultural practice. She merely smiled as Vriska moved her king pawn.

"I feel like it's oooooooonly fair to warn you," she said, "But I haven't lost a game of chess in two sweeps."  
"Really." Rose matched her move in kind, pointedly not making eye contact. "And may I ask who that loss was to?"  
"You may not!" Vriska said, slamming her king-side knight down.  
"As you wish," Rose murmured, moving another pawn up in support. "...I imagine GC is less than magnanimous in victory."  
"Fuck you, Lalonde!" said the troll, snatching up her bishop and depositing it on her fourth rank.  
Rose did not labour the point. She was not about to underestimate the troll-- she had acquired enough information about her during the game and her time in the dream bubbles to know that her propensity for melodrama was in no way a cover for any intellectual deficiency. She might well be telling the truth about her winning record. It was even possible that she'd maintained that record without resorting to mind control. But it didn't matter, because Rose was going to win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had a much easier time writing this once I started listening to Horizon's versions of Derse Dreamers, Pyrocumulus and Flare: http://www.youtube.com/user/Hanyuudesu?feature=watch
> 
> Fantastic singing voice, and she fucking nails Rose, in my opinion.


	3. Chapter 3

Rose was going to win. She didn't mean that arrogantly; it was merely that she had seen the way this game was going to go.

See was perhaps too strong a word for it. As far as she had progressed in the game in her few hours within the Incipisphere, and as beneficial as the merging of her doomed and regular timeline dreamselves had been, she had barely begun to scratch the surface of her Seer abilities before Jack put her adventure to an abrupt end. Still, she knew enough to sense the most likely outcomes, especially now, with her mind cleared from the infinite noise and fury of the Horrorterrors. And she had a good feeling about this game. Already, with the first few moves played, her sense of confidence was mounting. Vriska was a pretty decent player, it was true. Admittedly her style was a lot more aggressive than Rose was used to. Long hours spent forming intricate, hair trigger traps, feints, bluffs, and other defenses against her mother had furnished her with a formidable knowledge of one style of play. Compared to her usual opponent, Vriska was employing some highly unorthodox tactics. It was certainly refreshing, if nothing else.

"Geeeeeeeez Lalonde, this is chess, not ballroom dancing. Y'know the aim is to cull the Empress, right?"  
"Trolls have ballroom dancing?"  
"We fucking _invented_ ballroom dancing. How do you think bluebloods got to know each other without getting themselves assassinated? 8n't a lot of room for concealed weapons in those ballgowns."  
Rose thought of the brochures her mother had begun to dangle around the house, daring her to be the first to comment on her impending debut. The voluminous gowns. The ruffles. So...many...ruffles...  
"Are you quite sure?"  
"Um, yeeeeeeees, I'm _quite sure_ ," Vriska retorted, mocking Rose's intonation. Their surroundings dream-phased again, and they were in the austere, high-walled manor again, this time in something that might have been a very large wardrobe. Or a rather small dressing room. The walls were lined with various iterations of the same outfit, and here and there, rather ostentatious frock coats and other outlandish role-play garb. Rose did her best to not notice what was quite plainly fetish-wear; a revealing harlequin outfit with a bicycle horn-tipped codpiece, the most prominent outfit on display, was unfortunately a little too egregious not to be thoroughly plastered to the membrane of her mind's eye. Honk. _Honk._  
Vriska stood and rifled through the grey jackets and black t-shirts until she found what she was looking for-- a skimpy minidress slashed up the hip. On Vriska's scrawny figure it probably wouldn't be too awful, but Rose had a suspicion it would look rather more inappropriate poured over her own curves, such as they were becoming.  
"Try hiding a weapon in this get-up!" the troll said, flinging the garment at Rose.  
"This is considered formal attire in troll culture?" she asked.  
"Obviously."  
"And did the males wear, ahem, ballgowns also?" Rose quirked an eyebrow. She'd only had one conversation with a male blueblood, but the testosterone poisoning, she had no doubt, would last a lifetime. The thought of that kind of person garbed in some scanty strapless number like this was not a little amusing.  
"What else would they wear?"  
"Well, dinner jackets, tailcoats, military dress uniform..."  
"Are you serious? Who would wear _that_ to a social event?" Vriska looked entirely bewildered and disgusted with the notion.  
"Members of the military without decent suits?"  
Vriska snorted.  
"You don't know very much about trolls, do you Laloooooooonde?"  
She bent over the table and with a shark-grin swiped a knight Rose had been priming for sacrifice from the board, depositing her bishop with evident satisfaction.  
"My pardon if I lack the requisite comprehension of your culture that can only be obtained through several hours gawping at teenagers via the Internet. I will submit to your depth of experience of both our racial idioms." She shifted her remaining knight, pinning the bishop in horribly exposed territory. If Vriska moved it now she would expose her underbelly to fully a third of Rose's remaining force.  
The troll scowled.  
"You know what your problem is, Lalonde?" Vriska said, kicking off her boots and lounging in her obnoxious throne like a hunter fresh from the kill. "You think you're better than me."  
"No. Just smarter."  
"BULLSH8!" Vriska snapped, slamming a fist into the armrest. "I know how you look at me, and my fucked-up lusus and my burned bridges and my little black book of murdered trolls and you give a little shudder. And you think 'Well, I may have spread my legs and diddled myself for the gratific8tion of extraplanar beings so vile and inscrutable they don't have names, but at least I'm not _her_."  
She sat up straight now, and looked Rose straight in the eye.  
"Don't pretend you don't. You may not be a troll but I can still read you. If not your mind, then your...aura, your emotional jet-trail. Whatever you want to call all those fucked-up human impulses you pretend you don't have. You might as well tattoo them across your face as far as I'm concerned. Well, I've got news for you, princess. I've done a lot of shit I 8n't proud of now. But I never shook my pasty white ass at the Horrorterrors and then bit off more than I could chew."  
"You appear to be having some trouble with mixed metaphors there, dear."  
"Shut the fuck up! This is what I meeeeeeeean! You talk down to me with this snarky hoofbeastshit, but what you can't seem to wrap your feeble human thinkpan around is that you're in the presence of an actual fucking god. Everything you knew before you pitched yourself nook-first into the fun-loving tendrils of Those Beyond the Veil? I. _Cre8ed it_. A few basic concessions to deference, y'know, maybe even a little fucking gr8itude-- is that really too much to ask?"  
"My apologies. But when my unquestionably beneficent crea-'eight'-or is unable to correctly respond to an Evans countergambit I find it impedes my ability to bend the knee of obeisance. It must be the cold and lonely pragmatist in me."

"Well, the angry, vengeance-loving bitch in me thinks maybe you should reach some sort of compromise before I lose my temper." Vriska slammed her rook down in the centre of the board. Not an unexpected move, but not what Rose would consider optimal, for Vriska or herself. Still, it meant rearranging a couple of pawn traps, and that would take time for Vriska to redeploy. And so the game would continue, and likely in the same vein, until Vriska ran out of material to launch an attack with. Then, if she had any grace about her, she would concede. Rose was, on balance, more curious about whether Vriska was the type to admit defeat or not than about the outcome of the game. Something about the fractious dichotomy of terrier-like obstinacy and the quasi-pathological need to be seen as superior; would she deign to play until checkmated?  
Choosing not to respond immediately to Vriska's remark, Rose focused on the most expedient means of adjusting her defenses, and shifted a pawn into place to back one of its suddenly-vulnerable peers.  
"You and your precious paaaaaaaawns," Vriska drawled. "I don't know why you waste your time with those weaky-weak-weak pieces."  
"Because they annoy you so very much," Rose said, smiling benignly. "You play loose and along the diagonals. Pawns in sufficient numbers and well-deployed will frustrate that strategy."  
Vriska snorted.  
"You think you're giving me a chess lesson?" she said. "Please. I eat pawns for breakfast and use their horns for toothpicks." The bishop she'd previously left exposed now slammed into another of Rose's pawns, rather deeper in her territory than she liked, but which she'd be unable to take without leaving her core vulnerable to that damned inconvenient rook. Then again, if she gave Vriska time to move her other pieces up in support, they would probably break through on that flank and get to her underbelly that way.  
There was one salvation that presented itself: her queen-side knight, who she had come to mentally picture wearing a stoic expression and shades. While he couldn't capture the offending bishop, he could certainly put it under enough pressure to make a hasty retreat, and buoy up that flank.  
"Or at least, I would if these stupid pieces had horns."  
"You know," Rose said, brushing the hair off her brow before sliding her knight into position, "In human chess it is generally considered poor form to eat prisoners of war. In fact, we feel so strongly on the matter we don't generally permit it in actual warfare either."  
Vriska 'tsk'-ed as she saw the knight's timely intervention, and propped up her angular chin on her forearm, balanced on her knee.  
"Sounds like we'd kick your ass if it came to a war," she said. "All captured soldiers are sent for ration processing after debriefing by the Inquiserators."  
"I had a feeling something like that might be the case," Rose murmured. "Were you to join the military, had it not been for the game?"  
"Pfft. Obviously. It's not like we have a choice! I was going to be an espionarsonist." At Rose's quirked eyebrow, she rolled her eyes. "They're covert oper8ives; infiltr8 and destroy enemy systems and power structures. Dangerous, short-lived if you're not gr8 at your job."  
"Like you, presumably."  
"Fuck yes like me!" Vriska snapped. "Between my vision eightfold and my psychic powers it would've been a freakin' cinch." She smirked. "I'd been honing my skills in FLARP for sweeps."  
"And then the game happened," Rose said.  
"No, then Terezi happened," Vriska said. They phased to another room in the bizarre manse; judging by the amount of obviously personal effects scattered around, Rose took it to be her opponent's bedroom. Well, there wasn't a bed, just a rather large bulbous cocoon in a corner of the room. Rose's attention was more closely on Vriska, who was now lying on the floor. All over the floor. One of her arms lay, mangled, several feet away, and blood was pouring from the raw stump it had previously been attached to. There was also liberal amounts of cerulean pumping from what had once been the left side of her face.

"GC did this to you?"  
"I know, right?" Vriska said, as she stood, dusting herself off. She phased again before Rose's eyes, and was whole and unblemished once more. She seated herself, and sent her bishop scuttling back into relative safety.  
"...So what did you do to her?"  
"Oh, what, you just assuuuuuuuume I did something to deserve that?" Vriska said.  
Rose just watched her steadily, shifting another pawn into sync on the opposite flank.  
"Well, fine, I psychically forced one of her buddies to kill his peasant girlfriend by horrifically overclocking his psionic powers. But I gave her a robot body to use which she killed me with after we got into the game, so we're square now!"  
Vriska glared her opponent down, daring her to find fault. Rose elected to let it pass, and file it away in her rapidly broadening mental casebook for the troll.  
"It's your move," she said. Vriska deftly slid one of her few remaining pawns into the space vacated by the bishop, eyes not shifting from Rose's.  
"Interesting move," Rose said. She wasn't yet sure if Vriska was trying to psych her out, or simply throwing good pawns after bad. Both of them were eminently possible. She broke eye contact and studied the board. Taking the pawn with anything other than her irony-loving knight would rather spoil the line she had been building for the majority of the game, but exposing him to Vriska's depredations was not an optimal play either. She liked to save at least one knight for the endgame where possible.  
"Yeah, if by 'interesting' you mean 'kicking your ass'!"  
Rose ignored her. Leaving the pawn was another option. Vriska would probably use it to start munching up her own pawn screen, but she could ameliorate that. Decisions, decisions...

Without realising it, their surroundings shifted again, this time back to the open-plan lounge; this time, with fewer wizard figurines, and a tall, blonde woman in an chic lab coat sitting on Vriska's side of the table, dangling a martini from her slender fingers. Vriska started, as the woman materialised by her side.  
"What the fuck?"  
Rose and the figure ignored her.  
"At a loss, little Rosebud?" her mother said.  
"No," Rose said, scrutinising the board.  
"Well, let me know when you've made your move. Mommy's going to make another drink. D'you want one?" she stood, and quivered her glass slightly, the ice cubes in the bottom clinking together.  
"Mom, could you give me a hint?"  
"Now, why would I do that when you're more than smart enough to figure it all out yourself?"  
"Mooooooooooom..."  
"Oh, if you insist." She leaned down and kissed her temple. "If you're presented with two equally unpleasant options, choose the one that will cause the maximum amount of disruption for your opponent. That way you'll minimise their capability to capitalise on any weakness you present."  
"...Maximum amount of disruption..." Rose said, gazing at the board again.  
"I trust you'll get it before I'm back," her mother said, turning to go.  
"Mommy?" Rose asked.  
"Yes, dear?"  
"Will they play chess at school, too?"  
"Yes, of course. And you'll be the best. ...That's what you want, isn't it?"  
"Yeah!"  
"That's my girl..."


	4. Chapter 4

Her mother phased away as she walked to the kitchen. Vriska looked from where she had been, to Rose, and grinned.  
"Wow. My lusus could so totally beat up your lusus!"  
"I doubt that very much," Rose said, her attention turned back to the game. "You never saw her on Black Friday."  
"What's a Black Friday?"  
"For my culture, an excuse to act like trolls for a day in order to secure the choicest of frivolous purchases. For my family, an extremely hazardous drive down to the nearest shopping precinct followed by lashings of ultra-violence in Pottery Barn and a quick sojourn to the police station."  
"Sounds like my kind of night!" Vriska said. "Anyway, your lame human lusus is right. Hurry up and move, Lalonde."  
Rose removed the white pawn and placed her remaining knight down in its place.  
"I'm curious as to how you cultivated a relationship with your monstrous spider guardian, I must confess."  
"Well, you can take your curios8y and cram it, human," Vriska snapped.  
"Very well. It's disappointing, though. I don't see how I'm supposed to display the appropriate deference to your role and respect for your culture if you recoil from my olive branch like I'm twitching a mummified bovine phallus in your direction."  
She wasn't sure if trolls could pale, especially dead ones, but Vriska was visibly taken aback.  
"Wh8 did you say?"  
"I merely stated that you are making it difficult for me to attempt to reconcile whatever grievance it is you have with me in the interests of making eternity a little easier to bear for the both of us."  
"Wh8ever, human!" Vriska snarled, thrusting her queen along a diagonal and plunging it into the nomansland between Rose's trenches and her own arrayed warriors. "Don't think you can wriggle into my head. You can't beat a Serk8 at mind games. We're simply the best there is!"  
"Nothing could be further from my thoughts. My mind is on the game alone."  
"Uh, no?" Vriska shook her head once, emphatically. "I can read your emotional run-off like a book. And you stink of meddlesomeness. Have done since I turned up in your lousy bubble."

Rose had anticipated that Vriska might fling her power pieces into the fray, and held some reserves back for that eventuality. Admittedly she hadn't thought she would be quite so reckless, but she supposed that their back-and-forth was getting to Vriska more than she had estimated. She shifted one of her pawns forward, weakening the wall, but exposing the bishop on the rank behind that now threatened the queen. One of her rooks was covering it, safely on the back rank. Vriska saw the problem and swore under her breath.

"Going to move your queen back?" Rose asked, voice dripping with honey.  
"Fuck you, Lalonde."  
She swung it out to Rose's left flank, safe from anything but overambitious pawns.  
"At least I'm trying to play the goddamn game and not just bore my opponent to death!"  
"Defending well is a perfectly acceptable strategy," Rose said, nudging her king further behind the screen of pawns. "That you're so ill-prepared to counter it is more damning of you than it is of me."  
"Uuuuuuuugh!" Vriska snarled. "How the fuck can you be so smug? It's infuri8ing!"  
"Also a perfectly acceptable strategy. If an unorthodox one." Rose allowed herself a small moment of satisfaction. "It appears that mind powers and luck do not make such a good match for actually knowing how to play chess."  
"I'm warning you, Lalonde..."  
"In fact, your apparent claim of a four-year winning streak speaks volumes about either your unerring ability to find weaker opponents to prey on while avoiding anyone who might feasibly present a challenge, or the near-complete inability of the troll race to outperform an unremarkable thirteen-year old human in the field of strategic planning. Both are rather sad indictments of your personal shortcomings, wouldn't you agree?"

Two things happened when these words left Rose's lips. First was that Vriska knocked her king over. Second was that she continued her lunge over the board, scattering pieces everywhere and sending Rose sprawling to the ground, which dream-phased into the deck of some kind of sailboat. Although she did not breathe, Rose felt the wind knocked out her lungs and was ill-prepared for Vriska scrambling to her side and grabbing her by the t-shirt, lifting her up with surprising strength and slamming her into the boards.  
"Look at th8!" she snapped. "Guess I found a weaker opponent to prey on after all!"  
Rose glared up at the troll, waiting for her breath to return. When it did, she said:  
"I don't know what you hope to accomplish with this. Dying in dream bubbles just reforms the self elsewhere."  
Vriska sneered.  
"Then this is going to be a lot more fun than usual!" she said, and thrust her lips onto Rose's, her fangs snagging on the soft, supple flesh.

Rose's mind short-circuited for a moment, trying to connect the dots between exchanging unkind remarks about each other's upbringings to having an infuriated dead troll goddess grinding into her crotch, mangling her face with those cruel shark's teeth of hers.  
Then she snapped back to cognisance, expedited by the taste of iron in her mouth, bucking her assailant off, and rolling until she could stand at a safe distance.  
She wiped her lips and chin, felt the warm wetness of blood on the back of her hand, and balled her fists.  
Vriska almost seemed out of breath, which was patently ridiculous considering their situation. She slowly rose to her feet as well, tongue darting out and running over her red-stained lips.  
"What's the matter, Lalonde? Did Mommy's little girl get scaaaaaaaared?" she smirked, and tossed off her torn jacket.   
"No-one likes a sore loser, Vriska," Rose said, a quavering in her voice that she tried unsuccessfully to fight down. "And I while I must confess ignorance as to whether molesting me is some sort of bizarre troll submission ritual, either way it doesn't amuse."  
"Playing hard to get, huh?" Vriska cocked an eyebrow, and advanced towards her. "Suits me fine. Hell, I'm used to it by now." Rose skirted around, putting the upturned table between them both. "I've had to fight for every scrap of respect I've ever got. I can beat it out of you too. Fuck, I'll enjoy it. Putting the only bitch bigger than me right in her place."  
"Curious as to where you believe that is," Rose said, keeping her distance, keeping her talking. If she was talking, she wasn't fighting, and she already knew the Thief loved the sound of her own voice enough to be occupied in this manner for quite a while.

Though it was impossible for her to see, she detected Vriska's gaze drift lasciviously over her body.  
"I can think of a few options," she drawled. "Wouldn't mind comparing notes. John never did let me get a real _handle_ on the differences between trolls and humans."  
Rose found bile bubbling up inside her.  
"Does John know you're here?" she asked. "I doubt he'd be impressed."  
"Oh, you'd be surprised what he's prepared to forgive," Vriska said. "He's so magnanimous. It's sweet, really. Nice to be able to pretend for a while." A predatory smile split her face once more. "But you know as well as I do, a killer is a killer is a killer!"  
Rose's lip curled.  
"Don't act like we're the same. We're nothing alike. You're a monster."  
" _I'm_ a monster? The terror of LOLAR, the Horrorterrors' whore is calling _me_ a monster? Ha! Hahahahahahahaha!" Vriska cackled. "And they said I was deluded!"  
"I did what I did to save my friends, not my own worthless hide. The only reason I humoured your appearance for even a moment was academic interest in how troll society could spit out something as fucked up as you when it managed to produce someone as refined as Kanaya."  
That was clearly the sweet spot, judging by the way Vriska's face darkened.  
"Why would you give a sh8 about Kanaya?" she demanded. "Leave her out of this!"  
"Oh, have I hit a raw nerve?" Rose said. "How gauche of me. Perhaps before you start lecturing me about the emotional effluence I'm throwing off, you should get your own affairs in order. Maybe if you'd done that before, Kanaya would have had more time for you."  
Vriska shrieked and leapt at the table, springing off it as she phased into her orange tunic again, beating her wings and swooping down on Rose, hands outstretched. The whole movement had taken less than a second. Damn, Thieves were fast!  
Rose was entirely unprepared for a flying troll pouncing on her, and could do little other than throw her arms up to cover her face as the Thief bore down on her. She latched onto her arms and held tightly, yanking her off her feet, and dragging her along the rocky ground outside what Rose realised must be Vriska's ridiculous manse. She tried to dig her feet in and slow the troll beelining straight for a cliff, tried to free her hands from the surprising tenacity of those skinny fingers. No use.  
Vriska laughed like a drain as she dumped Rose over the side of the cliff, and she fell head-first into the thicket of webbing at the bottom of the canyon. The enormous spider she had seen Vriska petting previously, she saw as she fell, was now dead, decapitated, its thick blue blood splattered liberally over the canyon walls, the web, everywhere. She landed in the midst of the web, springy spider silk yielding and holding her fast. She was stuck, as Vriska circled overhead. Try as she may, she could neither break free nor exert enough control over her surroundings to phase into a situation in which she wasn't trapped among the gory remains of the second-biggest spider she'd ever seen, at the mercy of an twisted troll goddess. Typical, even in death her dreams should turn to nightmares. No rest for the wicked.


End file.
